Rebuild
by SeekerAstria
Summary: SPOILERS for episode 48: Order and chaos. Fight and flight. In the end, it can all seem terribly simple.


A/N – I don't normally consider something like this so very close to the end of a series, but watching ep48 with subs kind of forced my hand. I just 'can't' let it lie until Monday, so call this cathartic. Short, quickly done one-shot regarding the conclusion of the 9th March episode. Mostly speculation, as 48 wasn't clear on this particular...matter.

_Rebuild_

There were shadows in the darkness. Yumi Asuza knew this to be illogical, for there was no source of light here, the only colour the deep red breaking up her otherwise gloomy vision. And yet the shadows remained, seething and swirling around her soul, its wavelength beleaguered by the massive force of Asura's own. The Weapon's head spun with visions of death and chaos as she sought for some foundation to ground herself upon. When the light finally came with consciousness, Yumi quickly wished it hadn't. Contrary to what Asura claimed only moments before, her imagination was a fine refuge from _this_ reality.

"Hey? Miss Asuza?" Joe shook the woman's shoulder as hard as he dared. Petite anyway, Yumi looked especially fragile lying as she was on the Death Room's broken floor, dust-covered and bleeding. Joe had returned as soon as he'd heard the crash that followed Asura breaking free from Death City. After minutes that had felt like an age, he'd managed to wake the Death Scythe.

"Hmm, Joe?"

Glasses lying smashed some feet away, Yumi squinted up at him as she tried to piece together what had happened. She remembered a blinding shot from Asura and the resonating souls that had seemed to burn the air itself. An attempt to sit up resulted in an agonising pain in Yumi's chest and Joe's hand pushing her firmly back onto the ground.

"You take it easy, all right. I called for help. They'll be here soon."

"Never mind me." Asuza snapped, "What happened to Shinigami?" Even as Joe had tried to reassure her, something had crept to the forefront of Yumi's mind. Or, more accurately, an yawning absence of something. It took Joe's inability to meet Yumi's gaze to confirm what she feared. The Shinigami, her meister who was Death, was himself dead.

For a reason he wasn't sure of, Joe had expected tears from miss Asuza. The woman might be stoical, but she had just lost her meister. So had the world. He did not expect Asuza, ignoring her injuries, to use his shoulder to clamber to her feet and to walk to the exact spot where Shinigami had lain until not long ago when his torn body had faded into the ether. Joe wondered bleakly that only one would likely know where the death god now resided, and he was in no position to comment.

Kid sat on his knees in the dirt, hands flat upon the ground where his father had lain. To one side of him, Patty kicked aside the rubble, not knowing what to do. On the other side, Liz pretended not to cry by doing so quietly with the odd audible sob. When Shinigami had first fought Asura, Yumi had heard from Sid that he had suffered an injury. But within hours the hole in his mask had fixed itself as cleanly as though it had never been there. The Shinigami had healed himself, had rebuilt more easily than the new houses which had eventually replaced those destroyed by the clash between the two gods. No such repair was possible now.

The absence in Death City, the sense of lacking within Yumi's own soul were testament enough to that. For over ten years Asuza had gone about her duties as a Death Scythe under the impression that it was but a professional relationship. The intimacy of interactions between Weapon and meister had fallen by the wayside due to the great responsibilities of being of the Shinigami's Weapons. But even as her mind had rationalised the connection, her soul now ached at the loss that she could not quite put a name to. Swallowing against the tears that threatened to betray her – there would be time, all too much of it, for that later – Yumi tentatively approached the children.

"Kid?"

The address received no response from the boy only for the short-haired girl Yumi knew to be Patty, to turn to her.

"He doesn't want to talk right now."

"I know, but-"

"If you know" Patty kicked a lone rock over towards the hole in the Death Room wall "then you'll not talk to him. Right?" Her tone was childish, words simple, but Yumi saw her point. And even if Kid would speak to her, what could she say? The only factor capable now of defeating Asura was the demonslayer wavelength possessed by Maka Albarn, who was nowhere to be found. But nothing, Yumi believed, was achieved without an objective. Regardless of what Spirit had thought on the matter, the forces of Shibusen needed orders of some sort if they were to succeed without their commander. And that included Death the Kid.

"Death the Kid." Walking past the girls, limping slightly, Yumi bent down and put one hand on the young shinigami's back. The effect was instantaneous. Kid sprang to his feet and turned to the woman, skull-shaped shadows flaring from his soul wavelength in a number and force that Yumi had never seen before. The hand that had touched him now felt icy cold, but Asuza forced herself to collect her thoughts.

"You- we must continue. Asura is still out there, if we regroup it's possible we can prevail, but we need you."

"Do you? Must I?" Kid snapped back dryly, yellow eyes regarding Asuza with something close to contempt. Perhaps not even that, for the boy seemed to be looking through her. He lowered his head, pacing away from Yumi to face the hole in the wall through which the red sky and the remnants of Baba Yaga castle were quite visible.

"Liz. Patty." The girls joined him at the short command, transforming without a word.

"Where are you going?" Yumi queried, conceding defeat.

Twin shots of soul wavelength slammed into the ground leaving circular holes burnt deep into the earth. It was the only answer the Death Scythe got before Kid, mounting his skateboard, left the room in utter silence.

---

Joe was glad when the big doors to the Death Room crashed open as the medical staff approached. Arguing with an injured, quietly angry Death Scythe would normally be more than his job was worth, but he had at least managed to get Yumi to lie back down whilst he tried unsuccessfully to wake Spirit. From what the former meister could tell, the Death Scythe had suffered some broken bones and minor injuries, was battered but otherwise unharmed. Yet it felt wrong, Joe's soul perception jangling with the sensation that _something_ was off.

"It's not going to do any good." Yumi sighed wearily as two nurses entered the room, one tending to her, the other to Spirit. She was grateful for their ignorance of Shinigami's fate, as Yumi could only imagine the panic it would soon cause throughout the school. The second nurse, a newer member of the team, pulled away from checking Albarn's pulse as Yumi spoke. Despite herself Asuza sighed inwardly; at least Mira didn't react to being spoken to by a Death Scythe with wide-eyed terror.

"Wha-what isn't, m'am?"

"There's no point-" Yumi gave a hiss of pain as she manoeuvred herself awkwardly onto a stretcher,

"trying to wake him. Look at his soul wavelength. It's completely shut off."

This turned out to be the worst thing to say to the nurse, who did as she was ordered and promptly bit back a shriek at what her minor soul perception revealed.

"He's _not_ dead." Yumi insisted, too agitated to be sympathetic to the understandable reaction. She knew without asking what the nurse would have assumed upon probing a soul giving a wavelength response only just above that of a dead man.

Though Yumi knew full well that Spirit would not have consciously shut his soul away, that it was a natural defence mechanism against threats, the thought still irked her that her fellow Death Scythe, Shinigami's personal Weapon, had failed to fight against the admittedly terrifying odds. But if she hated the thought, she knew Spirit – where ever his mind had fled - would be loathing himself far more. He had not, would never have backed down when he was needed by his meister. Spirit was not the first to be overwhelmed by Asura and his insanity wavelength, and nor would he be the last.

As she was carried out of the Death Room, Yumi mused that would come as no surprise to those in Shibusen who knew something of the first Kishin to hear that he had turned his former ally's theory against him, nor would Shinigami's reaction. What else would a good father, a guardian of the world's order, do for his child? It seemed that fear had, this time, created a terrible sacrifice.

Ultimately it came down to a fundamental response. To fight or to flee, to risk death for the sake of another, or to shirk such responsibility and reap the consequences. Shinigami had made the choice by not offering Asura an alternative, or so he had thought. What mattered now, as it had done eight hundred years before and maybe countless times before that, was how the world was to be rebuilt. However long it would last.


End file.
